Centred
on the West Highland Railway, which opened to Fort William in 1894 and to Mallaig in 1901, this book
describes the late nineteenth-century ‘railway mania’ in the Highlands – and the immediate
consequences. It addresses the general politics of promotion and the disputes over state
assistance for the Fort William-Mallaig line, rather than the heroics and the romance of
construction and operation. It reviews other schemes, more or less successful. And it examines the
expectations bound up with railway development, asking how far these had been achieved, or remained
relevant, by 1914.

‘I think I have sometimes made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, and that is … perhaps
the highest function a man can do for his country.’ Charles Forman, civil engineer, evidence in support
of the Invergarry & Fort Augustus Railway, 1896.